The first things that came to mind were, 3-D, real-time, orbital bombardment, space carriers. In other words, "Sins of a Solar Empire". So....have to think of something else. Here's what I would do:

1) Separate out planet quality from planet size. One planet is Eden, but it's the size of the Moon. Another is a gas giant, but it's like Mars. Your dream planet is to find an Eden the size of a gas giant. Needless to say, the number of planet tiles would not be tied to PQ anymore, but size. Size and PQ both increase morale.

2) Much more variety and frequency of planetary bonus tiles. Let's see some 200%/300% influence tiles and 200%/300% morale tiles, 100%/200%/300% economic tiles (you build a stock market on them), planetary defense tiles, starship bonus tiles, ascension tiles (just like building an ascension starbase), any & all kinds of bonus tiles. Each planet should be unique, with a unique character--different size, different PQ, lots of different bonus tiles.

3) Lots of little events, all the time, and they sometimes involve ethical choices. Not just when you colonize a planet.

4) Ships orbiting a planet should be able to fleet up, same logistics, same everything; just like open space. This is stupid.

5) Planetary improvements which provide military assist, just like military starbases (except it only affects orbiting ships). Bonus tiles which boost those.

6) Special mining tiles, which act just like spices (or Uranium, or Oil...) in Civ3 and Civ4. Those are cool. They confer some small global bonus to your race, and if you have extra you can trade them, like a Trade Good. Some special tiles don't show up until you research certain techs (just like Civ). This may make you have to "upgrade' your Factory to a Mine, to get the bonus.

7) Lots more asteroids, and not always part of a solar system. This was cool in the campaign. Why are they not in the sandbox games?

8) Revamp the Espionage system, big-time. Although I don't know exactly how. Plenty of other people have strong opinions on that one.

9) An ability to beam food, or production, from planet-to-planet. Inefficiency penalties would apply. The penalties are usually significant, except for a select race or two. For them, that is their special ability: the ability to beam food & resources between planets with small penalties.

10) Bonus tiles even on PQ4 planets, and on terraformed tiles, and you can see them before you improve them. e.g. you see a 100% factory tile on your planet, but first you have to run Soil Improvement on it. It's a good motivator to do it.

13) Minor races should be obscenely strong, like the Dread Lords, but they just don't have expansionist ambitions beyond their own solar system. And they have their own unique ways of diplomacy/trading. Don't piss them off. Of course, sometimes there will be an event....

14) Trade should be significant again, like in Galciv1. They already nerfed economy starbase spam. Multiply the legal # of trade routes by 3X, i.e. Basic Trade starts with 10 trade routes, Master is 30. And require that the trading planets be unique combinations, i.e. not just 10 traders all going from Earth to Kora.

15) Economy/Influence starbase modules should exist which increase income--not just trade. I never understood why they didn't. Of course, income enhancers on an influence starbase have an interesting side effect: they benefit ALL planets in their sphere of influence. Not just your own planets.

16) Metaverse scores should be based on how soon you win, and they should factor in how tough your starting position is. Take an educated guess. If you start with a Precursor Mine on your home planet, nerf the Metaverse score. Not based on how much money/influence/research/starships you have at the end, or anything any joe schmo can do after the game's basically already won.

17) Let military starbases move one parsec/turn, like Terror Stars.

All told, if all these were put in, it would be a very different game.

Have you played TA since ~1.95? The minor races pack a lot more punch now. Of course, they're still somewhat slow to get moving in comparison, as they only have the one planet, but if you give them two or three years they'll show you what they're made of.

It may just be that the games that you play aren't long enough to notice this, however.

I hate to say it, but I kinda get annoyed at the artifical 'major/minor' dichotomy. I kinda like *having* the minor races, simply bcause they *do* act as a 'terrain' in many ways, but to a certain extent I'd like to see a rationale for why they're minor races and don't colonize - even topography (Say, setting minor races in isolated systems) would be sufficient, or a setting up a longer technology tree so that minor races started lower in the tree than the majors that happened to all be in contact before via the stargates.

But as it sits, the difference is just that the minors don't wann be major races, and neither create nor are affected by influence.

*An option to type my own flavor text for custom races. After all, how would a refuge of human freedom fighters hiding from the despotic Terran Empire get plans for Hyperdrive as a gift from "Earth creatures"?

I want to be able to construct my own custom tech tree in game without resorting to mods. The ability to write the description to your home planet would be cool. Also the ability to set the rarity of bonus tiles and resources you start out with in sandbox. Oh and more pirates that pop up like anomalies.

An economic system that has separate layers for use value and exchange value, so you could have a civ that had no concept of currency and only traded resources (energetics, volatiles, metallics, etc.), ships, and techs.

Population that works kind of like MoO2 did, with the ability to have several species sharing a world and the majority species determining any planetary bonuses, e.g. productive Klackons.

p.s. EF, you do know it's going to be a loooong time before GC3 goes into production, right?

I want pirates to be a large force in the galaxy since war often breeds such illicit activites. They could have super starbases which spawn near trade lanes and make both themselves and nearby by pirate vessels invisible without special sensors.

The entire criminal element needs to be revamped. I mean how many officers in all of the races navys don't dream of becoming warlords? There should be a defection rate when your in a war, when ships either join another navy or become pirates. The rate could depend on your moral standing as a civ, however weakened civs like the drengin might have tech like lets say for example "Really Hard Beatings" which decrease the rate.

Starbases should be able to be captured by be boarded. This could also apply to ships. Just imagine it, your batteship is cruising over to Toria when a super fast transport launches boarding partys at you. Whether you win or not would depend on the level of the ship, the number of the opposing crews, and your soldiering ability.

I think there should be some neutral structures your able to capture. They would be unique nonreproducable ones that were the products of centuries of interstellar trade. They would have a token defenses, including both ships and embedded weaponry.

I want new mega events including:

- The galaxies navys unite under an charismatic admiral and sieze the navy's of all the races.

- Space zombies! A virus creates a new minor civilization that spreads using a spore like vessels to infect and convert entire populaces into the hivemind.

- An experimental ship from another galaxy has made contact with yours. Capture the ship and control its powers. It would be super powerful and fast literally zipping across the map.

- A civil war has happened in Civilization1, and has split the empire in two. Pick a side between the loyalist and revolutionaries.

- Intergalactic invaders. A new species from beyond our galaxy has declared war on all its inhabits. They come with powerful yet beatable ships and many transports.

- A dyson sphere has been discovered. However its inhabitants are less than friendly. Any intruder within their system will be destroyed, military ship or no. Do you leave them be or risk war for untold technologies.

- A massive shockwave permeates through the galaxy. 90% of all ships and starbases where disabled as their crews were crushed to jelly. Now there an entire galaxy of ships waiting to be claimed by whoever can get their hand on them.

- The pirates are on the rise. A new clan leader has united his people to create a massive fleet beyond belief. There goal, to pillage the galaxy until they can pillage no more.

- A ring of the galaxies top diplomats have been eliminated and replaced by mysterious aliens. They have quietly disabled each civilizations defenses for the past year and now being caught proclaim your end is near, for their people have come to conquer. What do you do?

- Ships are exploding. A bacteria has somehow infiltrated the circutry of everyones ships and only now they are beginnig to malfunction. Research a new method of insulation for your technology and the explosion will stop.

- A civilization long thought defeated has returned and with friends. Reclaiming all their old worlds, they are armed with weapons beyond belief and are intent on getting revenge on their conquerers.

-A new spiral arm minie galaxy has collided with yours. New stars and planets have been discovered and now each civilization must begin a new colony rush to claim the new wealth.

- I want bigger classes of vessels like motherships and mobile factories.

- I want to appoint admirals and heroes to my forces. Captains for space combat and generals for ground warfare.

- Range should be more restrictive and your ships should have to return to port for supplies. There could be a timer that when gone the ship returns automatically to the nearest friendly port and resupplies. There is a secondary timer in which once it ends the ship starts to take damage as it has run out of emergency supplies. Ships destroyed in this way can be recovered by you or anyone else with the proper equipment.

- I think they should introduce moving comets that can be mined for rare resources. Once you have the technology you can set up a small mining base on them as they move. Once they run out of resources, new ones respawn and the race for them begins anew. These would replace the current galactic resources.

- The galaxy should have the air of being populated by groups other than the civs. There should be a variety of free trading ships that can be attracted by trading goods found naturally on your planets. These goods would also attract the pirates who would prey on both your ships and the free traders.

- The colonization of a planet should not happen immediatly, it should take months to fully colonize a world. Each step would increase its usable squares until you get to the maximum.

- I'd like some more non-planet owning races that you can deal with. For example you could have fleets of wandering nomads that move from system to system that increase that areas economy. They would also increase crime however and the system would suffer a morale penalty as the nomads took up the natives jobs. I also want non-cive races to be in your empire. If you control a planet of medieval aliens who have fought for centuries, they should increase your soldiering as young warriors seek glory in the stars. They should also have names based on there planets that would be random like for example the proud warriors of AegisIII, the Aegisi. I like some wandering hazards like space worms that could devour you structures and would have to be dealt with by you military.

- Going back to non-civ races, I believe each planet should have a modifier based on its specific citizenry. The modifier would be constructed on the basis of the % of each race living there. Lets say the Terran control AegisIII, however they only make up 10% of the population. Drengin immigrants dominate the world so the Terrans recieve a small weapon bonus for ships constucted on the world.

- I think we should have corporations as pseudo-civs. They would build starbases and control ships in you sectors, but pay taxes to whoever controls the sector. You could buys ships from them and request the assignment of trading vessels to your worlds, essentially making private trade routes possible. They would be attracted to civs with lots of influence.

- I believe there should be more stellar bodies in space to occupy. Moons and worlds of every class should be able to be colonized for resources. There could also be things such as blackholes, wormholes, and junkyards.

- Wormholes should be able to permenantly stabilized and used for transport.

- Anomilies should give you come cooler stuff. Like you could find an ancient warship from an alien civilization that is moderatly powerful. You could also find artifacts that would be modules you could build on ships but in limited numbers based on how many you find.

- Crews should have special structures to train them, with a structure producing a certain number of crewmen per week. Ships would have a minimum crew count and their effectiveness would be based on how many men there to man them. There would be other factors like better trained crews that provide bonues to certain situations.

- Planetary governers who would be of your own party and provide bonuses to you. However, if you are unpopular on the planet they'll elect another party's rep and you with be penaltied.

- Assassination. Use hired assassins in the form of agents to take out characters. Not the major civs presidents though, but people like Admirals and Governers. Depending on the person targetted and the lvl of the assassin, you would have and average of 50% to kill them.

- More responses to unpopularity. The people should rebel against and sieze of the planet. You could leave them be as a sort of minor civ or conquer them and be viewed as a despote by the galaxy.

- I would like more cool popups for events in the game. Like a typical newspaper with headlines like "Terran Alliance Fleet 177789 triumphes against the Drengin Empire Fleet 788823!" or "The Altarian world of Aegis III has been conquered by the Kyrnn military! Occupational forces....". When conquering for defeating a race it would randomly generate a report based on the outcome and the morality of the event. If a good civ took out a good civ, the paper would be critical. A neutral world conquered by an evil civ would have reports of loyalist fighting in the streets against natives who betrayed their world to the enemy. Stuff like that.

- controll your ships during space combat (you should at least be able to select the target for each of your ships and choose between a few commands like "attack frontal" "attack flank" "defend position" "retreat")

- more uesefull fighters (cheaper, faster to build, should be able to be equipped with more (early basic) weapons)

- carriers, so that you can bring your figthters faster into combat areas

- more hitpoints for colony & construction ships

- sometimes it sucks if you are at war with almost all races. Even with the so called "good" races. I'm mostly neutral or good and not evil but even good races declare always war on me and that sucks. I think the good/neutral races should be less agressive towards other good/neutral races and stay longer friends.

- (AI/diplomacy) the most stupid thing is, that they AI often offers me peace in one turn and one turn later they declare war again. I think there should be some peace time (at least 20 weeks or so) after they accepted/offered peace before they can declare war again.

- the construction time for starships should be decreased in general. E.g. in GC II I have some planets with 4 or 5 of the most advanced factories (but no manufacturing bonus) but even a medium or lager cruiser still needs over 50 weeks (huge ships even over 100 weeks). I think without a maufacturing bonus but many factories it shouldn't take more than 20 - 30 weeks for medium ships and 40 - 50 weeks for huge ships (with bonus around half of the time or even less, if you have more bonuses)

- larger home systems with higher morale

- there should be an additional entertainment building to keep up your systems morale better. When I built the most advanced farm in GC II I always need 2 - 3 of the most advanced entertainment buildings and if I have a food bonus on a planet I even need 4 - 5 entertainment buildings. So often I don't have enough space for other important buildings on most planets.

- you should be able to recruit regiments of marines for planetary defense/planetary attack instead of just using your planets whole population (anyone ever played Star Wars Rebellion? That's how the troops should work in GC as well)

- there should be some improvements/buildings which increase your population growth rate (not the maxium population per planet). Especially when a planet in GCII is attacked over and over again it takes way to long to increase the number of the population back to the number it had before the invasion. So some special structures would be helpful

- Starbase construction: I don't like the actual system of building starbases. I don't want to build a new construction ship for every new available starbase module. I think it would be much better, if you only have to build one construction ship per starbase and when a new module is availabe you select the starbase and click on a button labled "add module" then you select the wanted module and you pay some credits and voila the starbase module is constructed one week later.

Ross-I can kick out an end-tech huge ship (~4000 cost) on a planet with 8 industrial sectors (class 11 if we're counting farm, starport, colony) in 41 turns with no racial bonuses. Most trees grant you a 30% bonus total, if I'm not mistaken, which moves us to 31 turns (no, really).

Since I generally don't even build ships like this on planets where I don't have 15+ industrial sectors and a quantum power plant, I'm normally looking at 12 turns, max, for an endgame ship. Considering I typically take military production bonuses at the customization screen because I find them worthwhile both in the colonization phase and later on in the game, this is actually even less than the above.

Maxed out medium in TA is about 1500 cost. Initial colony provides 14, tech tree provides 30% boost, 5 advanced factories provides 8 each for 40. At 100% military funding you should be looking at around 22 turns to kick out a medium on your admittedly shabby shipbuilding planets.

Granted, my numbers are on 100% funding, but I still have to say that you're doing it wrong. No offense intended.

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With regards to your theory on population growth buildings, have you looked into recruiting centers, or, for that matter, fertility clinics? To my knowledge, only the Arceans and Thalans don't get the former, but I haven't looked into who doesn't get the latter. For what it's worth, recruiting centers are TA only, while fertility clinics were introduced in DA.

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In general though I would agree with a large portion of your suggestions, except most notable your population/morale concerns. Try researching morale techs/getting morale trade goods (only really possible with Terran tech tree in TA-do you guys not see how OP that tree is? [/rant]), snagging a morale mining starbase or two, etc. I've never really needed more than a counter espionage center, but then again I don't tend to go over 20B.

The general consensus is that with very few and specific exceptions if you're using a farming bonus tile for a farm you're doing it wrong.

Starbase system has received many complaints, and your suggestion is identical to that proposed by many veteran GCII players. That said, it's more of a reinforcement of it than an oh someone already posted it thing. Hopefully we'll see something more manageable in GCIII.

Although I don't see it happening, I would like to see better, more personalised progress reports in sandbox games, and it would be neat if my spies were to submit brief reports about alien technology so that I can keep up to speed with what my opponents are doing.

I would really like to see an enhanced ship combat system. I'm not wild about the idea of having control over a whole fleet's actions though - I think that if there will be tactical combat it would be nice to have good default roles that you can't go wrong with in most cases, and have those roles pick the most appropriate actions so you don't have to issue many individual orders.

Also, I'd like to see some variance in ship combat components. Maybe an experimental quantum plasma diffuser that burns out its firing coil half the time and destroys asteroid belts the other half of the time.

Ships should actually have to fly within one parsec of a base or colony to resupply. New colonies and starbases shouldn't automatically give you more range as they do currently. That implies an infrastructure that simply may not exist until months have passed on a new colony or base. Research into range-enhancing technologies would allow a quicker set-up of resupply facilities and unlock base modules that enable ships to resupply, as well as improve life-support systems. Ships would by default choose an autopilot route that follows the best supply route.

I want to be able to park more ships in orbit. Thirty would be good.

Most of all though there has to be a superior AI under the hood of GCIII. Not to frustrate the player, you understand, but to give them more replayability factor. At the moment a human player can seal victory with some very early decisions in the game, and the AI won't try to stop them until it's too late. It should instead take a leaf out of the human book and launch surprise invasions and limited offensives which give the impression that it's serious about taking your worlds away from you if you aren't going to defend them with more than pop-guns.

The ability to see the terrain of a planet from orbit before colonizing it! What you can build a space ship to colonize another world but you can't see what it looks like from orbit?

Stop the AI colony spamming! It's frustrating to run across an AI's empire and see 40 class 4 planets with nothing but a spaceport and facilities that never finish building.

How about an option to force the AI homeworlds to be more than 4 sectors away from yours? I had a string of 9 games in a row where a scoutship with no improved lifesupport found the enemy AI's homesystem! (this alone would make me a happy man!)

I had a few more but others have suggested them so I won't repeat them.

I've always been interested in the franchise and the universe, the story. I'd like to see something that expands the storytelling to a different medium. Kind of like an RPG or a freeform space exploration/trade/empire building game from the perspective of a player character.

I'd eat GCIII up like delicious cake no matter what. But I'm just saying the franchise overall has a lot of potential and even though most of these genres are outside SD's expertise as a publisher they might just find some talented developers that would be into something like that, and because SD's got talent as developers themselves, and with their commitment to high standards as a game publisher/developer/designer, and their excellent support of their products, they might just be able to span out if the conditions are right.

I mean its been a long time since we've had a new Freespace/Freelancer/Homeworld. Those games (genres) were great and still had (have) tons of room for improvement not to mention outright innovation.

My real post now, for it to be GCIII it would have to keep the core turnbased 4X gameplay that makes it GalCiv.

so.. assuming this is a whole new GC not just tweaking the original:

- Starting with the most obvious weakness of GC2, combat.

honestly, I like the automation. its very GC. but that doesn't mean combat has to be weak. I'm thinking automated combat but with the visuals of Sins of Solar Empire. But every Fleet should be pre-programmed by the player to use a formation and have a certain kind of behavior. ie scouts attempt to escape when engaged, battle fleets engage unless set to be evasive, and formations can be offensive or defensive, they can utilize small fighter squadron tactics, or frigate lines, or capital formations etc.

that's really all i have to say about combat.

- the tech tree

Make interesting weapon systems upgrades. ie; weapon upgrades that disrupt engines or laser weapons or special abilities or communications(disrupt formations) and even a system for capturing enemy ships. Formation upgrades that have your fleets maneuver emphasizing defense or offense as a group. Area-of-Effect weapons. Systems that increase rate of fire, combat speed, or maneuverability. different types of Laser/Kinetic/Shield/Armor systems. have 1 laser/kinetic system that damages shields OR armor and 1 that damages shields AND armor but to a lesser extent, and same thing for the Armor/Shield Systems, and throw in some racial specialty systems for the Military/Technologist/Pacifist races. Stealth/Sensor Systems. you get the idea. And Missiles/Point Defense should be more interesting, a frigate specializing in point defense might be able to protect a fleet in tight formation against quite a few missiles, but a squadron of fighters with missiles may just overwhelm them.

Same concepts for space stations.

And with Influence keep the same mentality. Have some influence upgrades that have different tangible effects other than just batteringram turning a planet; like a Politico Upgrade that gives your civilization influence in another empire's planetary elections (so if you're a pacifist government, they'll lean towards pacifism). And their disposition would create a DOESWANT/DOESNOTWANT kind of feedback from the planet, for example, if Mercantalists won the election the planet will want trade routes, if Pacifists will oppose war. Another upgrade could be a Xenoempathy Upgrade that would cause the inhabitants of a planet to share your disposition with another empire. So if you're at war with the Drengin and have high influence with an Altarian planet, though the Altarian Empire is at peace with the Drengin, that planet may WANT to go to war with the Drengin or they may WANT an alliance with your empire, something the Altarian Empire will have to consider if they want to keep the approval of their people on that planet. If their approval for you is higher than their approval for their current empire they could turncoat or possibly support your empire with techs information or building resources (if you have a trade route with the planet). Other upgrades could be things like Propaganda Upgrade that enhances the influence you have over a planet that you have spies on (yours or another empires), Morality Upgrade, causes them to share your morality relative to your influence. I think this would be a much more natural way to deal with Influence. I like it because it would be easy to influence an empire's planets that shares a lot in common with your empire and you wouldn't turn their planets to your side so easily, you'd really only be enhancing their focus and strengthening your alliance, conversely an enemy would be naturally resistant but utterly crippled by your influence.

Entertainment, same mentality, but it should be your way of manipulating your own planets just as influence helps you manipulate other empire's planets. upgrades that let you decide the disposition of a planet. Say you upgrade Warmongering Socialist and Technologist entertainment, that would let you get morale bonuses from increasing military/social/research spending/planet focus, it would also increase support for those parties, which could be a bad thing if its not your party, but if you're pursuing a certain overall focus and your race is predisposed to a certain focus it would only enhance that. could also research a xenophobia or xenophilia upgrade causing your people to share your dispositions with other races and may help or hurt trade depending. These upgrades would cause your planets to have their own DOESWANTS and DOESNOTWANTS, giving you the chance to appease the planet for approval or ignore them for a hit to approval.

i would write more but this could turn into an essay and then no one would read it. I have a lot of thoughts about Minor/Major races and how pirates etc could factor in. and some more ideas about trade/technology and colonization/invasion and major events. All very GC stuff true to the original game, but new at the same time.